By now you've seen the new Thursday-night NBC sitcom Coupling, right? Actually, that's a stupid question--if you'd seen it, you couldn't be reading this column. See, it's impossible to read after plunging a rusty nail into your eyeballs in a desperate hope of removing the images inflicted upon your poor peepers by that worthless and painful piece of shit, Coupling.

As you know, Coupling was originally a British show about a group of slutty sexpots who spend much of their time giving each other a good "rogering." ("Rogering" is an impolite limey term for "porking.") And in England, the show is a monumental hit. However, in America, our Coupling is a monumental bucket of diaper gravy.

Our version is staffed with a comely bunch of beef- and cheesecakes, and they even use the same scripts as the Brits. Yet, watching Coupling holds the same attraction as licking motor oil out of a junkie's cold sore. So the question is, "How could this have happened?" It's quite simple, really. NBC forgot one basic, irrefutable fact: British people ain't funny. Never have been, never will be.

"Hold on there, Wm.â„¢ Steven Hump-Me!" I hear you cry. "I think England's brand of 'Brit-Wit' is simply tops, guv'nor!" Well, there's a reason you believe this fallacy, and that's because you're an "Anglophile" (a polite term for someone who likes anything and everything about England, including getting "rogered in the boot"). It's an unfortunate truism that England's sense of humor falls somewhere beneath that of the Taliban, and if you need proof, please look no further than Monty Python's Flying Circus. If there were ever a more untalented gang of hacks than the Beatles, it would be these dumbasses and their woefully unamusing skits about parrots, "funny" walks, and shitheads that go "NEE!"

HOWEVER! Into every sullied gene pool some genius must fall, and out of the millions of comedically challenged limey shows there is ONE good British sitcom. And that would be The Office.

The brand-new second season of The Office is currently showing on BBC America (Sundays, 9 pm), which means if you don't currently get this channel you should immediately pay off your extremely bribable cable installer to hook you up on the sly--because it's WORTH JAIL TIME. Designed to look like a documentary about the everyday humdrummery of a British paper company, The Office stars Ricky Gervais as a bumbling, insecure, manipulative middle manager. But the best part of his character is that he thinks he's hilarious, when he's absolutely NOT! See? Just like real British people! And that's why this show is BRILLIANT!

But get this! Now NBC is wrangling to do an Americanized version of The Office, and if history is any indication, they'll figure out some way to fawk it up. Why? Because if there's anything more UNfunny than a Monty Python cast member in a comedy sketch about a parrot, it's an NBC sitcom. Don't agree? Tell it to the shitheads who go "NEE!"